At Upshot, Nate Cohn has settled on a very specific line about Bernie Sander (I, II) that I don’t think he argues very well for. The argument in a nutshell is this: Bernie Sanders is very liberal and so he appeals to others who are very liberal, but not to those [...]

A liberal activist blogger conference apparently interrupted Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. I wasn’t there and didn’t really follow the rabid tweeting, but got the gist that it was because these candidates ignore Black issues. I went looking for more comprehensive subsequent coverage and found some hilarious stuff, specifically around Bernie Sanders. Let us review.

The meme on the fringes of web identity commentary (I, II, III, et al) has been that Bernie Sanders doesn’t speak to Black and Latino issues. This is remarkable because, of course, the economic issues Bernie talks about are consistently ranked in public opinion surveys as the most important [...]

Damon Linker has a piece at The Week arguing against compulsory voting. If you’ve ever read a college newspaper, there is no reason to read Linker’s take on the matter because you’ve already seen it before. Nonetheless, I found this bit pretty funny in light of Linker’s own failings:

The spoiler effect is the effect of vote splitting between candidates … with similar ideologies. One spoiler candidate’s presence in the election draws votes from a major candidate with similar politics thereby causing a strong opponent of both or several to win. The minor candidate causing this [...]

Election punditry is not good. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s bad. While poll aggregators and election modeling mercifully cleared out a lot of the junk prognosticating, still with us is the post-election autopsies telling us what it all means.

Those who provide autopsies of the purely game-focused sort are interesting [...]

Much has been said of Romney’s basic lack of concern about facts in this campaign. All campaigns bend facts, misrepresent things, and occasionally lie, but few do so with the boldness of Romney. After picking Paul Ryan, Romney’s campaign, in a Rove-esque maneuver, blitzed Obama over Medicare. The campaign claimed Obama took money from Medicare [...]

Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan for his vice president. The office of the vice president is almost entirely irrelevant; so it’s not clear why this really matters. Paul Ryan’s most notable “achievement” is his proposed budget. The budget is an absolute train wreck that doubtlessly owes its provenance to Ryan’s comical affection for Ayn Rand. [...]

In the aftermath of Citizens United, outside political spending has become unleashed. This new political reality troubles many, especially those on the left. With no checks on outside political spending, those with the most money can spend an unlimited amount of money to influence elections. We’ve seen how ugly this can get with [...]